How to Start Writing Content as a Small Salesforce ISV

For smaller ISVs, the idea of “content marketing” is something you know you should be doing, but rarely feels urgent enough to justify the time. After all, your team is busy doing the work that matters: building products, solving problems, supporting customers. 

Content ends up pushed down the list, neglected, or approached in a rush when you suddenly need more leads. So when you do try to create content, the path forward feels unclear. 

Do you write about your features? Do you explain how your product works? Do you rely on ChatGPT? Who can we chase for a case study?

The real challenge isn’t a lack of time or writing skill, it’s just difficult to figure out where to start and how to make content genuinely useful for your audience. 

Start with Value, Not Features

The first mistake most small ISVs make is assuming that their product features are the most important thing to talk about. It’s an easy trap to fall into because you know your product inside out, and it feels logical to start by explaining what it does.

Your customers don’t care about a feature list.

Your customers are coming to you because they have a problem. They want to see how you can solve a specific pain that’s costing them time, money, or confidence in their own systems. If you want to write content that’s going to bring you leads, you have to understand those pain points first.

The best way to do that is by listening to your customers. In feedback surveys, sales conversations, discovery calls, and casual check-ins. Ask them why they reached out to you in the first place. Ask them what wasn’t working before. Ask what made them feel like they needed a solution. 

The answers you’ll get, the honest, human reasons, are your content foundation. That’s where you begin.

Don’t Outsource Your Brain To ChatGPT

When time is tight, it’s tempting to throw a few prompts into ChatGPT and let it generate your content. And yes, you’ll get something back that looks polished enough. It will probably sound professional, sprinkle in the right Salesforce-adjacent buzzwords, and even give you a passable LinkedIn post or blog draft.

The content you get will sound like everyone else’s. It’ll talk about “navigating complexity,” “streamlining processes,” or “supercharging productivity”, the same tired phrases that fill the feeds of every other ISV and consultancy. It won’t feel like you, and more importantly, it won’t connect with the problems your customers actually face.

AI is a helpful tool, but it can’t think for you. If you feed it surface-level inputs, you’ll get surface-level outputs. Your job is to bring the thinking – your unique point of view, your customer insights, your understanding of what your product really solves. 

That’s the only way to write content that feels genuine rather than generic.

The Spoke Method: A Simple Way to Generate Content Ideas

If you’re stuck on what to write about, start with this:

Pick five real pain points your customers face.

For example, let’s say you’ve built a tool that helps teams track deal risk. The pain points could look like: 

1. “I don’t know which deals are real.”
   
2. “I waste hours chasing reps for updates.”
   
3. “Our forecasts are always off.”
   
4. “We get blindsided by last-minute surprises.”
   
5. “It feels like every deal is a firefight.”
   

These are your starting points, your hubs. Each one is a problem you can write about.

Now take each pain point and build topics from topics.

Let’s say you pick “I don’t know which deals are real.” From there, your spokes could be:

• Why sales teams struggle to spot risk early and how to fix it
  
• The signs a deal is stalling
  
• How to make sure your pipeline reviews are effective
  
• The cost of chasing deals that were never going to close
  
• What a healthy deal actually looks like
  

You don’t need a new idea every time you sit down to write. Just go back to the pain points your customers care about, and build from there.

That’s the spoke method. It’s simple, it works, and it stops you from staring at a blank page wondering where to start.

Content Takes Time, So Make It Part of the Job

If you don’t make time for content, it won’t happen. It’s as simple as that.

You can’t treat content as an optional extra to squeeze in when the stars align. If you want to build consistency and avoid the “we should really be posting more” guilt that so many teams feel, you have to carve out real time in your week for it.

That means blocking time on your calendar. Treating it like a client project or a sales meeting. If you don’t, you’ll end up in the same cycle: good intentions, no output.

Build a Simple Content Calendar And Stick to It

A content calendar doesn’t have to be complicated. Mine’s in a google sheet. It tracks the titles, themes, types of content, and publish dates, that’s it.

It keeps me accountable, it stops me from panicking for ideas, and helps me see what I’m really saying over time.

If you want a copy, send me a message, I’m happy to share it.

Just Start

You don’t need a 3,000-word thought leadership piece. You don’t need to sound like a marketing team and you don’t need to have all the answers.

You just need to start.

Write 500 words that reflect what you know to be true, based on real conversations with real customers. Focus on providing value for your reader, and keep going.

If you want to start treating content like a priority, let’s chat!